Spotlight on January Books

This month we are featuring 24 books. There are more than twice as many new sff and related releases this month in traditional publishing not to speak of the countless indies from Amazon and Smashwords but we are limiting ourselves to books that will be reviewed here or are similar with such. For the full schedule of January 2012 titles known to us, you can consult the Upcoming Releases page.

The release dates are US unless marked otherwise, though for books released in the UK and US in the same month but on different dates we use the earliest date without comment and they are first edition unless noted differently. The dates are on a best known basis so they are not guaranteed; same about the edition information. Since information sometimes is out of date even in the Amazon links we use for listings, books get delayed or sometimes even released earlier, we would truly appreciate if you would send us an email about any listing with incorrect information.

Sometimes a cover image is not available at the time of the post and also sometimes covers change unexpectedly so while we generally use the Amazon one when available and cross check with Google Images, the ultimate bookstore cover may be different.

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“The Man Who Rained” by Ali Shaw. UK Release Date: January 1, 2012. Published by Atlantic. (SF/FAN).

“Seven Princes” by John R. Fultz. Release Date: January 3, 2012. Published by Orbit. (FAN).

“Leaves of Flame” by Benjamin Tate. Release Date: January 3, 2012. Published by DAW. (FAN).

“The Daemon Prism” by Carol Berg. Release Date: January 3, 2012. Published by Roc. (FAN).

“A Path to Coldness of Heart” by Glen Cook. Release Date: January 10, 2012. Published by Night Shade Books. (FAN).
“The Serpent Sea” by Martha Wells. Release Date: January 10, 2012. Published by Night Shade Books. (FAN).

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“Faith” by John Love. Release Date: January 10, 2012. Published by Night Shade Books. (SF).

“Gideon's Corpse” by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Release Date: January 10, 2012. Published by Grand Central. (MISC).

“Orb Sceptre Throne” by Ian Cameron Esslemont. UK Release Date: January 12, 2012. Published by Bantam UK. (FAN).
“In the Lion's Mouth” by Michael Flynn. Release Date: January 17, 2012. Published by Tor. (SF).

“The Flame Alphabet” by Ben Marcus. Release Date: January 17, 2012. Published by Knopf. (FAN).
“Blue Remembered Earth” by Alastair Reynolds. UK Release Date: January 19, 2012. Published by Gollancz. (SF).

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“In the Mouth of the Whale” by Paul McAuley. UK Release Date: January 19, 2012. Published by Gollancz. (SF).

“Transmission” by John Meaney. UK Release Date: January 19, 2012. Published by Gollancz. (SF).

“Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon” by Mark Hodder. Release Date: January 24, 2012. Published by Pyr. (Steampunk).
“Boneyards” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Release Date: January 24, 2012. Published by Pyr. (SF).

“Pineapple Grenade” by Tim Dorsey. Release Date: January 24, 2012. Published by William Morrow. (MISC).
“Heir of Novron” by Michael J. Sullivan. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by Orbit. (FAN / Omnibus).

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“Giant Thief” by David Tallerman. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by Angry Robot. (FAN).
“Greatshadow” by James Maxey. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by Solaris. (FAN).

“The Great Game” by Lavie Tidhar. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by Angry Robot. (Steampunk).
“Sadie Walker Is Stranded” by Madeleine Roux. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by St. Martin’s Griffin. (HF).

“The Faceless” by Simon Bestwick. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by Solaris. (HF).

“Shadows West” by Joe R. Lansdale & John L. Lansdale. Release Date: January 31, 2012. Published by Subterranean Press.

Happy New Year 2012!

As 2012 has been dawning all over the world, we wish everyone:

Happy New Year 2012!

(our regular January Spotlight returns on January 2-3)

Thoughts on "Parallel Stories" by Peter Nadas (by Liviu Suciu)

Order "Parallel Stories" HERE

INTRODUCTION: As 2011 is drawing to a close, I wanted to discuss all my top books of year here and the only one that was missing was Peter Nadas' 1150+ page, 18 years in the writing and few more in translation masterpiece. I will offer just a compilation of my thoughts as I have been unable to cohere them into a review, but I hope they will give at least an inkling of this book's power. Very long, quite difficult and quite messy and sprawling on occasion, but a great and memorable book that I see myself rereading for a long time. Here is the blurb:

"In 1989, the year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse on a park bench and alerts the authorities. This scene opens a novel of extraordinary scope and depth, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans—Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Gypsies—across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century.

Three unusual men are at the heart of Parallel Stories: Hans von Wolkenstein, whose German mother is linked to secrets of fascist-Nazi collaboration during the 1940s; Ágost Lippay Lehr, whose influential father has served Hungary’s different political regimes for decades; and András Rott, who has his own dark record of mysterious activities abroad. The web of extended and interconnected dramas reaches from 1989 back to the spring of 1939, when Europe trembled on the edge of war, and extends to the bestial times of 1944–45, when Budapest was besieged, the Final Solution devastated Hungary’s Jews, and the war came to an end, and on to the cataclysmic Hungarian Revolution of October 1956. We follow these men from Berlin and Moscow to Switzerland and Holland, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, and of course, from village to city in Hungary. The social and political circumstances of their lives may vary greatly, their sexual and spiritual longings may seem to each of them entirely unique, yet Péter Nádas’s magnificent tapestry unveils uncanny reverberating parallels that link them across time and space.

This is Péter Nádas’s masterpiece—eighteen years in the writing, a sensation in Hungary even before it was published, and almost four years in the translating. Parallel Stories is the first foreign translation of this daring, demanding, and momentous novel, and it confirms for an even larger audience what Hungary already knows: that it is the author’s greatest work."

THOUGHTS: The parallel stories of the title have rarely any finality and characters jump in and out though there are several mainstays in the "bedrock" part of the novel that takes place in Budapest 1961 and revolves around several late middle aged women with troubled past, their sons, nephews, husbands, and especially the Lippay-Fehr household.

The novel took me several weeks of reading, rereading, going back and forth and extensively using the search function on my epub version which I alternated with the print version as I read each page at least twice, though not necessarily in order, but sometimes following the characters using search. As quite a few of these stories just stop at some point, while others start I think that either a flow chart of some sort or using search is useful in making sense of the huge tapestry of the book.

"Parallel Stories" is extremely dense and jumps between pov's, narrative forms, tenses, characters, so it is best read as a collection of vignettes; some shorter, some longer as in the (in)famous seventy page sex scene that is like most of this novel not for the easily offended - I did not count the pages of the scene though it seemed to be 50 pages at least but others did and 70 sounds about right.

There are haunting descriptions from war to sex to death, bodily fluids left and right while the novel abounds with very deep and subtle connections between characters that are easy to miss. There is also much more so that it is really hard to convey what the novel is about unless you start reading and the book was worth all the money and time I spent on it, no question about it.

On the other hand the scathing review by Tibor Fischer in the Guardian has a kernel truth and the novel may turn readers off easily, but I am in the "masterpiece camp" and consider the book an impressive achievement.

Magic Gifts: A Free Kate Daniels Novella by Ilona Andrews (By Mihir Wanchoo)

Official Ilona Andrews Website

Read FBC’s Review of “Magic Bites” & “Magic Burns”

Read FBC’s Review of “Magic Strikes” & “Magic Mourns”

Read FBC’s Review of “Magic Bleeds” & “A Questionable Client”

Read FBC’s Review of “Magic Slays”

Read FBC Interview with Ilona Andrews

Amongst the authors which I have discovered in the past couple of years, the pair of Ilona Andrews has rapidly become one of my favorite ones. Their Kate Daniels series is one of the best ones in the urban fantasy sub-genre and it is has gone from strength to strength, with each release surpassing the high of the previous one. Earlier this year in a blog post I had detailed as to how there was a small alteration to their current release schedule with the addition of a new book which would feature a side character. The details of that post can be read over here, also newer details have arisen including the title of the new book which is Gunmetal Magic.

A few months later there was another tweak to that new schedule due to personal reasons and the details can be read over here. However in the first post there was a big announcement that that the authors would be providing “extra content” to help alleviate the extended wait for the forthcoming releases. The plan was to release a Kate & Curran novella during the holiday season, for which the blurb is given below:

Sometimes even the Beast Lord and the Consort have to take a break from protecting the Pack. Sometimes they just want to have a nice quiet dinner out in town. And then a necromancer at the nearby table dies, the lose vampires come flying through the glass windows, and before you know it the walls of the restaurant are redecorated in a lovely shade of red. What seems at first to be an unfortunate accident turns into a slow murder of a child. Now Kate and Curran must follow the clues to stop an ancient power intent on revenge. To succeed, they must bargain with Vikings, face horrifying undead, and hardest of all, work with each other!

The events of this novella occur simultaneously with those of Gunmetal Magic (Andrea Nash novel) and it is currently being offered free by the authors, which shows how tremendously they appreciate their fans and readership! The novella will be free to download in a variety of formats until the 6th of January 2012. Thereafter it won't be available as it's set to be released along with the print copy of Gunmetal Magic as bonus content. This will be helpful for those readers who love to have print copies. So go to the author blog to get your hands on this wonderful holiday present. I know I did and since I finished reading it over the weekend, I can safely say that the novella is another sterling addition to the wonderfully addictive universe of Kate Daniels.

A Nice Chistmas Gift: "Percepliquis" by Michael Sullivan and "Angelmaker" by Nick Harkaway (by Liviu Suciu)

After a busy Christmas Eve with late carols and an even busier Christmas with the whole package from the morning presents under the tree (of course most for my son and then for my wife), the Orthodox Church Service and the Christmas party until midnight, I had a chance of finally opening the two very exciting books I got as sort-of Christmas presents in the mail, Percepliquis by Michael Sullivan and Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. As expected Percepliquis starts very strong and I am really looking forward to read this highly touted series finale.

While I have greatly enjoyed The Gone Away World in 2008, today I mostly remember it for the long and convoluted paragraphs that somehow read funny and not clumsy.

Angelmaker starts in a somewhat similar manner but if anything it is even funnier and wittier and I found myself rolling with laughter at the misadventures of the main hero, Joe Spork, who wants to live a quiet life repairing the odd mechanical artifact, but an intruder cat which wants the house to itself, an assortment of mobsters related to his deceased father's missing inheritance and an old lady with a dog that manages to reassert the supremacy of the four legs against the two legs after Joe temporarily defeats the cat, are determined not to let that happen.

It is early of course but I really expect to have a grand time reading Angelmaker and the book announces itself as a huge 2012 release. And there seems to be a doomsday device and other sff assortments too...